Almost 40 days before the Crew departed for tonight’s game at Sporting Kansas City, an
influential group from Columbus left on a similar trip, but with a different agenda.

One day after Anthony Precourt was introduced on July 30 as the new operator-investor of the
Crew, he and nearly a dozen representatives from Columbus hopped aboard an 8 a.m. chartered flight
to Kansas City. There, the group received a full-scale tour of the success story that is Sporting
Kansas City as it played host to the Major League Soccer All-Star Game.

More than a week later, Columbus City Council President Andrew J. Ginther was still impressed by
what he saw — and what it could mean for the Crew in the coming years.

“Three things (from the trip) came out for me: opportunity, opportunity and opportunity,” he
said. “It really helped open my eyes to all of the economic-development opportunities that you can
leverage with a professional sports franchise that has a commitment from corporate Columbus as well
as government and community leaders. “Nothing disparaging about Kansas City, but if they can do
this, we certainly should be able to leverage the same type of economic-development opportunities
that they’ve been able to realize here in Columbus.”

Key to all of the development? The addition of the soccer-specific stadium now known as Sporting
Park, which opened on June 9, 2011, in Kansas City, Kan. Situated in an area known as Village West,
the stadium is part of Kansas’ largest tourist attraction that includes the Kansas Speedway, a
minor-league baseball stadium and retail options. Total cost of the investment was $573 million,
split between the public and private sectors.

The purpose of the trip, put into motion by Crew president and general manager Mark McCullers
more than a year ago, was to find out how that can happen here.

“When you go to a place like Kansas City, what ends up happening is you just learn a lot, and
you get your creative wheels spinning,” said Alex Fischer, president and CEO of Columbus
Partnership. “I can think of all sorts of similar but not parallel tracks in Kansas City. “So
whether it’s a new stadium or a renovated stadium or it’s a redeveloped area, whether it’s
integrated with practice facilities, whether it’s integrated with broader soccer complexes within
our community, you think about what other communities have successfully done and bring that back
and understand how you try to leverage your asset.”

One asset in Columbus is Crew Stadium. It opened in 1999 as the first soccer-specific stadium in
the United States, but it faces an uncertain future. With the Crew focused on financial goals such
as selling naming rights to the stadium and reaching 10,000 season-ticket holders, a major
renovation or a new stadium remain in the distance.

Ten days after taking control of the club, Precourt said that ownership remains committed to
Crew Stadium and that a new stadium is not his highest priority.

“We anticipate playing in Crew Stadium for the intermediate future,” he said. “First things
first: We have to improve our play on the field, improve our business operations, and that will
lead to hopefully improving the stadium or building a new stadium in Columbus.”

Like Ginther, Franklin County Commissioner John O’Grady is a Crew season-ticket holder. He said
the county was primarily interested in the overall economic impact, not just the stadium in Kansas
City. According to Sporting Kansas City’s website, the Village West development was projected to
create 8,300 jobs with an average annual pay of more than $40,000.

“I think that was probably the biggest takeaway for us: the benefit when the public sector and
the private sector both work together to do projects of that nature,” O’Grady said.

After living and working in Kansas City for a decade, Linda Logan moved to Columbus in 1990. Now
the executive director of the Greater Columbus Sports Commission, Logan said the transformation of
the area around the stadium in Kansas City has been remarkable.

“As someone who lived there, I was quite amazed at the renaissance of Kansas City, much like
what’s happening on the West Side of Columbus with the new casino and more,” she said. “That was a
neighborhood that really was depressed and did not have a lot to be proud of. To see what has
become of it is remarkable.”

Can it happen here?

“I came away thinking this could be a great opportunity,” Ginther said. “We have a lot of great
things going for us in Columbus. We’re a loyal town of sports fans. That’s really what I came away
with, a much better sense of the potential and the opportunity for Columbus to try and take
advantage of the same sort of things.”